Meet Eddie Gamarra

We were lucky to catch up with Eddie Gamarra recently and have shared our conversation below.

Eddie, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I was always a talkative kid. My report cards would, year after year, admonish me for talking without raising my hand.
It was my experiences on the stage that gave me guidance on channeling that energy. From being the ringmaster in my kindergarten’s play about a circus, to community theater, from a high school Speeches & Presentation class to acting throughout college, I learned how to speak up and connect with an audience.
That said, I was profoundly insecure when it came to “working a room.” I was once described as “a bird” by someone at a party. She came up to me and said, “I see you perching on windowsills and the arms of chairs, but you don’t talk to anyone. You perch like a bird.” Once she pointed that out, I had to learn how to be come an extroverted introvert. I had to learn how to turn it on and off. I began to understand that I am not an imposter. We are all human. I know what I know. I know that I don’t know everything. That realization is liberating. I know that you know a lot, but also don’t know everything. If we can learn and share, ask and listen, then no one is an imposter. That realization is empowering.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

What do I do: Drawing upon my experiences as a lifelong student and as a university professor, I help people understand how creative commerce works, how they can be empowered by understanding the legal and financials systems that guide creative commerce, and how they should take active roles in how to make things and make things happen. I have worked across film and tv, across animation and live action, as well as publishing. I have been a seller, a maker, and a buyer. My guiding question is how can I help people navigate these industries? If people are willing to pay tour guides to help them explore foreign lands, I too can get paid to help people wend their way through the dark forest of the entertainment industry.
I love helping individual storytellers rethink their position in the business world. I want to help them see themselves as CEO of their own lives. I love doing both creative work (editing, notes, pitch practice, etc) but also business strategy (where does this story best live, how to find a rep, who are the buyers and what are they looking for, etc). I also really love helping companies figure out how to mine their catalogues of IP strategically, and how to learn the best practices of other industries that can help improve their own bottom line. Be my client an individual or a company, the goal is the same: to give them the right intel and guidance such that they can manifest their goals profitably and in a way that is creatively fulfilling.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Studying the history of media: everything old is new again. The human impulse for storytelling doesn’t change. Technologies of storytelling do change. How people buy and sell stories is a point of fascination for me.

2. Studying the psychology of story: from the universal practice of telling a tale around a meal to the unconscious processes involved in the sharing of a story, my academic work profoundly informs my professional perspectives and practices.

3. Studying the industries from the inside out: am constantly observing and analyzing the why/how of the business of storytelling. How reps (agents/managers) function creatively vs operationally? Why pitches work or don’t? How to best connect with audience through better marketing? How much things cost and how to negotiate better deals? Etc.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

1. Am a die hard Freudian (caveats abound), so all of his work is foundational. Read his essay on “The Uncanny.” He understand how fiction/myth/dreams and any story contains layers of meaning. Telling a story resonates in conscious and unconscious ways.

2. Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim’s THE USE OF ENCHANTMENT, which examines the value of fairy tales to self awareness and to living a healthy modern life, is essential reading.

3. I reread ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS and remind myself of the fun puzzle that is language. Those stories were the first to help me realize that language is a form a play, that stories can make sense without making sense.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Headshot photo credit: Eddie Gamarra
Panel photo credit: IBPA

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